‘Wonderfully weird’: VCUarts student curates her first show exploring posthumous records

Peggy Stansbery, Staff Writer

Thousands of years ago human bodies were sacrificed into bogs, according to artist Elise Wojtowicz. 

In Ireland, people dig into bogs to gather peat for fuel causing these bodies to be rediscovered, according to Wojtowicz. She said the bodies found are so well preserved their wrinkles can be seen, they still have food in their stomachs and their brain is still intact. 

Wojtowicz traveled to a bog in Ireland to create her alluring multidisciplinary project “Bog Pilgrim” displaying at The Anderson’s Hidden Galleries from Nov. 10 to Dec. 3. 

A body in a bog remains preserved overtime because there is no oxygen to break down organic compounds to decompose it, according to Wojtowicz. If a body put in the bog resurfaces, it exists as it did when it was first put in the bog, Wojtowicz said. 

“I was thinking a lot of how we can look at a bog body from 2,000 years ago and know so much about who that person was and how they lived and what life was like,” Wojtowicz said. “What would that be like today?”

The goal of the project was to create an “artifact” that could exist as a record of humans living in 2022, Wojtowicz said 

The records and artifacts Wojtowicz created include hung weavings and paper mache casts of the bog’s land displayed upon the gallery’s walls, according to Wojtowicz. 

The projection of Wojtowicz’s performance — where she sacrifices a concrete shaped baby into the bog — is displayed in the gallery’s second room, according to Wojtowicz. She had covered the concrete “bog baby” with leather that she had laser etched her photographs of different women into. She sewed it together with yarn made out of hair to represent a “posthumous” record of life. 

Wojtowicz said in the second room she used dark lighting and ambient sounds to curate a transcendental and transformative space. 

“It was like a pilgrimage to go and perform this ritual,” Wojtowicz said. “It was very spiritual. I birthed this baby and killed it within the same action by releasing it into the bog, but in that way it lives on forever.”

Wojtowicz said she left the “bog baby” to be found one day. She said she wondered if it would ever be found and what questions would come from its discovery. Wojtowicz hopes people leave her exhibit feeling more connected to our place in time, she said. 

“I hope they feel some kind of acceptance of the unknown,” Wojtowicz said. “Because that’s what the big takeaway for me has been. Through making this project, I hope I can give that to someone at least a little bit.”

“Bog Pilgrim” was her photography thesis project as an undergrad in VCUarts in August 2021, but she continued working on the project after her completion of her thesis. 

“It didn’t feel like I was done yet, I needed more from the bog,” Wojtowicz said. “So I applied for the Dean’s international research grant which allowed me to go back and continue my work in Ireland.” 

Wojtowicz has completed the VCUarts photography and film degree but is still working on her double major in art education. 

Art history intern at The Anderson Shannon Kane enjoyed Wojtowicz’s unique display of her photography and how it featured a lot of women, according to Kane. 

“She showed that photography doesn’t have to be on a flat surface and something that is confined to a frame,” Kane said.

Kane said she enjoyed how Wojtowicz’s weavings featured aspects existing in the photography, showcasing the continuity of the project.

“I am interested in the interaction with history of bog people and people who are found in bogs,” Kane said. “I think it really touches on that and brings it into a contemporary time.”

Gallery assistant at The Anderson Asia Beasley also said she isn’t used to seeing photography like Wojtowicz’s, but her photography felt different and natural. 

“This building has such a rich history of all the different types of exhibits we do and people probably won’t have experience with multidisciplinary projects like this one,” Beasley said. “So I think that it being very modern and contemporary a lot of people will be interested in it and going there and being in such an interesting space.”

Chair of the photography and film department at VCUarts Jon-Phillip Sheridan taught Wojtowicz and found her to be a hardworking and experimental student, according to Sheridan. 

“When I had her in class as a student it was in a very technical lighting class,” Sheridan said. “She was really good at learning the art and science of lighting and started to experiment with that knowledge. She has always been really good at building a foundation of knowledge from which to experiment from.”

Integrating video, photography and sculpture together is a big component of the department’s identity, and Wojtowicz did so through creating sculptural photography and pairing it with video, Sheridan said. 

“I love how strange it is,” Sheridan said. “It’s just wonderfully weird.”